Thursday, September 22, 2016

There is a "in the water boat show" here in San Pedro, California located at Cabrillo West Marina. To visit the show you need do drive to the end of Miner Street in the Los Angeles Harbor and pay ($15.00).

All the fun a boat owner has

I rode my single speed bike over to see what I could see for free. Nothing is free. The fence is covered with these super glams of what a future boat owner is promised.

The banners look so great I wanted to run down to the docks and buy another boat but I had forgotten my wallet.

When I ride my bicycle I take my Samsung or my Nikon but never my wallet. Being a boat owner that is currently living on his 5th boat a wallet can be dangerous especially if one has poor impulse control.

There are displays under the tents and I had heard that kayaks and stand up paddle boards are being shown. My 2 stand ups and surf skis are stored in a dingy rack close to my boat. Maybe I should charge for the view and I do give free lessons. Our marina as three kayaks for customers to use. None of the guest paddlers here look like the women shown in the banners at the boat show. In fact most weight too much to get out of the kayak and get back on the dock.

New boats will stay pretty and shiny until the first monthly payment is made.

Flags don't come with the boats and you must always have a lot of them for opening day.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Sunday rolls around again. Some morning the boat is wet and some days it is dry. It is hard to figure the weather here. You can count on a breeze almost every afternoon. My last blog was short on text as the Blogger editor wiped out much of what I had typed when I started adding pictures.

deck dripping

Need a self cleaning boat

My daughter Frances is in Boston where she had an opening yesterday at the MFA and when I opened up Twitter I was entertained by her appearance.

Beanie in Boston

My morning usually starts with wiping down parts of the boat because everything is wet or dripping.If you live in a house or apartment in the city or on a farm in the country you for all intent purposes don't deal with the roof. To open up and get out I must remove my drop boards and climb up my ladder and start wiping. The majority of sailboats have the cabin and berths down below where power boats don't. Larger power boats often have cabin space below and have more than one level. Also the shape on the interior conforms to the shape of the hull making powerboats more roomier.

My boat is connected to shore power 115 VAC and is metered and my electric bill is included in my monthly billing. Last month's bill for shore power was $6.09 which is a dollar higher that last month. Recently I added another fridge to my galley and that one runs around the clock whereas my internal fridge runs off my house batteries which are charged by my two solar panels. One 70 watt panel is bolted to the transom rails and faces east. That panel starts charging 15 minutes after sunrise on a clear day. The 50 watt panel is not bolted down and can be redirected to follow the sun. That panel has a power cable that is routed through a circuit breaker to my battery bank and the fixed panel to hard wired to a voltage regulator. When sailing the smaller panel is lashed to the center cabin hatch.

The voltage regulator and my dc to ac invert have USB charging ports.So all my devices that can use USB charging get the juice from the solar panels. All interior lamps have low wattage LEDs and interior lighting is from solar.

My water is stored in a forward tank beneath the V-Berth and is connected to a Shurflow pump that supplies the sink in the head and the sink in the galley. The pump is driven by the batteries also. My Samsung flat screen will run off my invert as the wattage is low. Basically the Telly is left off. The FM radio and ship radio run off batteries too. Appliances that required A/C can be connected to my 1000 Watt generator if we are off the dock. I made a cable that allows the gas powered generator to be connected to A/C connector in the cockpit. So the boat is not entirely off the grid when tied to the dock but the setup is pretty GREEN.

Friday, September 16, 2016

With all the nightly moisture you would think the boats would stay clean but with a coat of dust mold starts to grow the surfaces and without cleaning things get ugly. Each day starting at sunrise boat workers appear like ants and start hosing off and wiping down the boats. The charges for this service (some are decent some suck) varies with the length and size of the vessel.

Mold growing on boat.

Nice wooden ketch

Nice J-Boat

Another view of wooden boat

Our marina will not handle boats greater than 60 foot in length but the new marina across the channel takes 100 foot plus maybe 120 foot.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

My boat is located in a upwind slip and is the second slip after you walk down the gangway. The transom is in full view to walkers that navigate the sidewalks around the marinas. There are three marinas on the west side of the "West Channel" and the sidewalks wind around which allows one to walk from 22nd Street almost to Cabrillo Beach.

One evening when I was still under a roof I was watching a science show on television about the falling water levels of large lakes in Africa and how evolution can change fish species when land bridges separate bodies of water.

This led to some internet searching which led me to Lake Malawi then Likoma Island. This is where I discovered a luxury resort: Kaya Mawa The words in the Nyanja Language means: Maybe tomorrow

As a six year old I learned the song "Manana" as it was always sung during the Sing a Long when I went with my family to the Shrine Auditorium Family Shows.

The faucet she is dripping and the fence she's fallin' down
My pocket needs some money, so I can't go into town
My brother isn't working and my sister doesn't care
The car she needs a motor so I can't go anywhere

My mother's always working, she's working very hard
But every time she looks for me I'm sleeping in the yard
My mother thinks I'm lazy and maybe she is right

I'll go to work maÃana but I gotta sleep tonight
(maÃana, maÃana, maÃana is soon enough for me)
Oh, once I had some money but I gave it to my friend
He said he'd pay me double, it was only for a lend

But he said a little later that the horse she was so slow
Why he give the horse my money is something I don't know
(maÃana, maÃana, maÃana is soon enough for me)
MaÃana, maÃana,

My grand parents lived on Vermont Ave at 78th Street in Los Angeles. My father and I would walk to the Shrine with my Uncle Bryon early on a Saturday afternoon to stand in line to get good seats. It was an all day wait. After the doors opened we would get seats in the center just behind the orchestra. My Uncle and I would save the seats while my father walked back to 78th to get the car and bring my grandparents back. Before the ushers opened the doors my father and I would explore USC and all the interesting points in the neighborhood.

My boat is located in a upwind slip and is the second slip after you walk down the gangway. The transom is in full view to walkers that navigate the sidewalks around the marinas. There are three marinas on the west side of the "West Channel" and the sidewalks wind around which allows one to walk from 22nd Street almost to Cabrillo Beach.

One evening when I was still under a roof I was watching a science show on television about the falling water levels of large lakes in Africa and how evolution can change fish species when land bridges separate bodies of water.

This led to some internet searching which led me to Lake Malawi then Likoma Island. This is where I discovered a luxury resort: Kaya Mawa The words in the Nyanja Language means: Maybe tomorrow

As a six year old I learned the song "Manana" as it was always sung during the Sing a Long when I went with my family to the Shrine Auditorium Family Shows.

The faucet she is dripping and the fence she's fallin' down
My pocket needs some money, so I can't go into town
My brother isn't working and my sister doesn't care
The car she needs a motor so I can't go anywhere

My mother's always working, she's working very hard
But every time she looks for me I'm sleeping in the yard
My mother thinks I'm lazy and maybe she is right

I'll go to work maÃana but I gotta sleep tonight
(maÃana, maÃana, maÃana is soon enough for me)
Oh, once I had some money but I gave it to my friend
He said he'd pay me double, it was only for a lend

But he said a little later that the horse she was so slow
Why he give the horse my money is something I don't know
(maÃana, maÃana, maÃana is soon enough for me)
MaÃana, maÃana,

My grand parents lived on Vermont Ave at 78th Street in Los Angeles. My father and I would walk to the Shrine with my Uncle Bryon early on a Saturday afternoon to stand in line to get good seats. It was an all day wait. After the doors opened we would get seats in the center just behind the orchestra. My Uncle and I would save the seats while my father walked back to 78th to get the car and bring my grandparents back. Before the ushers opened the doors my father and I would explore USC and all the interesting points in the neighborhood.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

When I first started blogging I had an IPhone and a laptop. My pictures were taken with my Nikon D80. Each blog required the data from the camera to be downloaded to the HP laptop then edited. File sizes needed to be reduced to shorten the Blogger editor upload.

Photos taken for weddings

Living on a boat means you are very close to the water. IPhones don't float. Smart phones and salt water can be very expensive if mixed.

My Nikon is still around but my Galaxy S6 is usually in my back pocket unless I am out paddling. Phones are not allowed on any of my stand up paddle boards or when paddling a surfski. Learned the lesson.

My grandson Arlo in 2008

Jayne's power boat

Since this Blog is several years old many links on the sidebar are now dead ends. As I mentioned earlier for a period of time all blogs were about speedway racing and most of the followers were involved with the sport or fans of it. Each Blog was linked in FaceBook. FaceBook became a hackers paradise so I stopped using it.

Sunset Downwind

My grandfather's flag

My Instagram is @Captaindewayne and maybe I can get some followers to read this. It was hard to keep the sidebar up todate for Dylan. He has his own site on YouTube now:Dylan Stark

One of my neighbors live in Riverside County and they make that terrible drive when they use their Hunter sailboat on the weekends. Yesterday they had a broker on their boat as they have decided to sell it. Their boat is a forty footer and that required a larger slip and larger slips are rarer in older marinas. If you are ever thinking about buying a boat, first see a psychiatrist or some mental health provider before looking for a boat sales person. Then if you are not committed and start shopping be aware that just because a boat is for sale doesn't mean the slip is going to be available. There maybe a waiting list before I move to where I am at I had to get on a waiting list and wait for a empty slip.

Visiting another marina

Currently where I am there are lots of empty slip for 35 foot boats but a waiting list for live aboards. Regulations and management policies can vary greatly between marinas.

Friday, September 9, 2016

My daughter Frances visited my old friend Dick in Aspen a few years ago. She had met Dick when she was a teenager and I had taken her skiing there where we stayed at their house. Her most recent visit was there for a performance at the Opera House downtown. She relayed to me after she had told Dick I was living on my sailboat, Dick's message was "I always wanted to live on a boat, it was my dream." Dick was a remarkable person and I always though highly of him. Now I not sure if he would have been really that happy with "living on a boat".

Things that can go wrong

Lots of people drool over the fancy pictures of power and sail boats featured in the slick magazines. Well it is not always cocktails at sunset with a beautiful woman or a golden sunrise with fresh lobsters for breakfast.

Earlier Catalina at Dana Point

My experience is you are most likely to have a blue heron shit on your boat or have a visit from a raccoon that leaves behind his message.

There are several different experience that seem to be very appealing to the novice. Blue Water cruising sailing from port to port seeing the world from your cockpit. Well that experience has missed me so far. My boat is capable but lacks lots of hardware and electronics that are beyond by pocket book and its slim budget.

My sailing is more of a day sailor and that becomes less and less as more items are added to the boat to make it comfortable for living aboard.

My boat was purchased after I sold my house and retired. Previously three sailboats had know me as their owner. And when this Ericson was maybe available I became a two boat owner, Boats are a hole in the water that you pour money into so why not have several?

Planning to live on a boat was not in the early plans. In fact planning has never been one of my strong suits. In reality if I needed a suit I would have to drive across the county to find it at my daughters place.

Homeless people live out of shopping carts and used boxes. There isn't any room for a shopping cart on my boat. My closets (two) lack space for things that are not needed at the time. Living on a boat forces the issue: Do you want something or do you really need it? That is also true about pots and pans, dishes (not sure why I have several coffee cups

Wilmington

Seven days a week is not a weekend. Many of my weekend visitors haul dock carts from the parking lot to their boat and when it time to go home they haul the stuff back home. My hauling is a one way project and it is done with one of my trusty bicycles.

The bicycles that I didn't sell and kept are not the kind you can leave outside a grocery store. Fortune was kind to me and I rescued an old Raleigh from rusting and installed two racks on it. This became my Ghetto bike and was always secured with locks and with enough rust I thought it was a keeper until one night some bastard cut the locks and took it.

Being anal retentive I can speak with veracity that I paddle my stand up board more than I drive my Nissan. A Garmin watch with GPS records paddling daily and this year I have not missed a day so my Nissan is driven in the marina parking lot only to keep the battery fresh.

For me a bicycle is really necessary as while on the boat reading or using the internet I am just sitting and driving a car is just more sitting.

Wilmington with 09 sticker

Using wheel with DIY self steering

Since I purchased my boat it has been in 4 different marinas. Each location has a different view, some good, some bad.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

My blogging stopped because I couldn't get a reliable WIFI connection with my laptop when on my boat. Today I will try once again. My daughter Jayne started blogging years ago and I followed in her footsteps. After a while of early boring post I started blogging about my speedway racing adventures. That was a lot of fun and work but I was living in a house in Lake Forest, California and had a DSL line with reasonable speed and after the races I would stay up late blogging.

Main Channel in Wilmington

When my son Dylan turned 18 he decided to move out of Plastic Land and he moved to Portland where bicycles rule the nest. This left me with the decision to vacate also and move to my sailboat where I spent every weekend.

Galley after I purchased the boat

A recent change in "live aboard" status allowed for a higher percentage and I signed up for an inspection. My sailboat was docked in San Pedro and the marina is part of the Port of Los Angeles. I was given the number of the agent that does the boat inspection which I called and made an appointment for a later date as I was sailing up to San Francisco with a friend who was doing the Single Handed Transpac.

At this time I was still racing speedway and was using a trailer with my Nissan to haul the bike to the tracks. I also had our family Westfalia which also could carry a motorcycle.

The Hondas and Jawa Bye Bye

Bye Bye to lost Van

If your are moving onto a boat you must downsize or pay for lots of storage. Or both. Several bicycles and motorcycles had to go. The trailer had to go. The VW van went to South Pasadena and the Nissan to San Pedro where the boat was. My daughter's already over crowded garage became stuffed. After the racing season was over the Jawa went on the auction block but I kept my street bike in South Pasadena.

Riding the 110 Freeway from one end to the other is scary on a street bike so that went went on Craigslist too. Bye Bye Suzuki.

After two weekend of garage sales and lots of give away I got a storage unit in Mission Viejo.
Then I had stuff (space consumers) in South Pasadena, on my boat, in a marina locker, in my Nissan and VW van plus storage in Orange County.

On a boat space can't expand unless you get a larger boat.

Marina cost are a function of the length of the boat so a 40 foot boat cost more that a 30 foot boat.

Live aboard users play additional charges usually a percentage of standard fee.

My sailboat has a 10 foot beam and is 35 foot long bow to stern.

There wasn't any room for music records, books and their book cases. Bye bye.

Before I left a roof over my head and a sidewalk in front I often wondered how I was going to downsize. The big screen TV, speakers, desktop, washer and dryer: all bye bye.

Two remaining bicycles went to daughters garage, one to a storage unit so I was suddenly without a bicycle to ride. So to go shopping one had to either walk or drive. Well walking is good for you so I started walking to the store unless the groceries got too heavy.

But the good part (maybe) was I still had our dog Dede. Who was not a fan of sailing or boats.

Lots of information here about the shooter. Probably a good Google search would bring same. In Newtown you must be 21 to process firearms, Adam was 20 went he went on his rampage. He got his first rifle at age 4? (I got mine at age eight...